


The Vanquished Queen

by morethanprinceofcats



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:46:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22352047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morethanprinceofcats/pseuds/morethanprinceofcats
Summary: Held captive by Mordred, Guinevere is not able to free herself.
Relationships: Guinevere/Mordred (Arthurian)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Vanquished Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Right of the King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22282027) by [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness). 



> Darkest Timeline.... but darker.
> 
> I wrote this because Mira said I could.
> 
> This starts in the middle of The Right of the King and goes in a different direction.

“Why should I hurt my betrothed? Come now. My hair is darker, my frame is leaner, but you cannot say you see nothing of Arthur in me. You cannot say you never looked upon me with desire.”

His eyes shone brightly in his face, with a need in them that went deeper than envy, greed or lust. Perhaps it was not a sin, at the core, that drove him. Looking into his eyes, though, she saw only darkness, as if the man had been built over a sinkhole. As if, despite what Arthur had done to save him, all his life he’d been drowning.

It was only the truth she flung in his face.

“You were my husband’s bastard,” she said. “I pitied you.”

Whatever insecurity hovered in that face vanished, and whatever similarity he bore Arthur did as well, as his features twisted into a hideous grimace; her husband had never looked like that, not even to an enemy. Guinevere would have shrank away from him then, if she could have. But he lunged at her like a wild animal, knocking the chair over so that her legs were crushed painfully against it as she fell. She heard herself let out a cry of pain and fear, forgetting her promise to deny him the satisfaction of any such sound. She could try all she liked to be a marble statue. It had been a foolish thought. What did a statue do when hurled to the floor, besides shatter?

Mordred’s hands were cruel and hard on her shoulders, slamming her onto her back.

“One does not pity a king!” he snarled. She had only a moment to stare into his reddened face before he lunged down again, this time to kiss her. 

He tried, it seemed, to make up for the feebleness of his charms through brutality rather than passion; more than once she felt the pressure of his teeth, and he was so forceful she could not even attempt to turn her face away without feeling the cold stone floor grate against the crown of her head. Then she felt his hands on her breasts, and heard the terrible sound of fabric tearing, as with one gesture he ripped her dress to the navel. 

Any freedom she gained when he lifted his head to look at her vanished as he groped her with cold hands. He warmed them on her skin as he took his liberties with her, and her thrashing and shoving did nothing. Mordred had always seemed slight in armor, but it was apparent he too had been trained to wear heavy armor and wield heavy weapons. Lacking her husband’s strength, he made up for it with violence. Unlike Lancelot, he was not afraid to hurt her.

One of those rough hands thrust between her thighs and tried to part them. Rage and bile swam up her throat, and she let out a scream. 

The hand left her thighs at once, only to slam her head back to the floor with such contempt of her comfort that her teeth clicked together in her skull and she thought she saw bursts of light beneath her eyelids. Guinevere groaned, her struggles lapsing momentarily.

“That,” he panted above her, “was a very foolish thing to do.”

To her relief his hands withdrew, and then she heard the sound of clasps unbuckling and fabric giving way; he was seeing to himself, with greater concern than he’d shown her own ruined gown. Guinevere renewed her attempts to free herself, starting by going directly for his throat.

His eyes bulged satisfyingly for only a moment before his hands clamped down on her wrists and he forced her to the floor again, snarling. This time he transferred his grip, so that he held both her hands above her head. His reach was greater than hers; however little room this gave her to move, it impeded him far less. 

Because he had hated it before, she began to scream again. She knew none of his men would come to her aid, and, to her repulsion, might even enjoy the sound of it themselves; but perhaps it would be a torment to her tormenter. Mordred, however, only laughed. She paused in her screams only to conserve breath as she struggled, trying to resist him by kicking, but he was too close for this to have any effect. She felt her heels beat the stone floor, trying to get traction enough to wriggle her body away from him. It was no good, and when she felt his bare flesh on hers, she stopped moving abruptly. As if he might stop then; or perhaps she was merely in shock.

She shut her eyes tightly as his free hand slid between her legs again, the movement reminding her of a snake.

“Yes, shut your eyes,” she heard him whisper, in a voice constricted with desire. His breath stirred the sunlit gold of the hair that curled around her ear. “Pretend I am Arthur, if it helps. You may even enjoy it.”

As if Arthur had ever held her down or torn her clothes, or if she had ever twisted beneath him in an effort to do anything but bury him deeper inside of her. Disgust forced her eyes open again, to stare up at him with hatred.

“Arthur has never hurt me,” she whispered back in fury. “He’d die first.”

“He’ll die anyway,” said Mordred dismissively, with a bit of a grunt; then she heard him gasp. He did so in the same moment she did, and she felt tears disturb the clarity of her fury. Mordred rocked closer as she tried desperately not to fall entirely to weeping - solely because if he did this to her while she wept, it would remind her too much of Lancelot. “Why _not_ pretend?” he asked her, his hand sliding in and out of her hair, reminding her that the back of her head throbbed in agony where the floor had struck it. “Then hurting you would not be necessary.”

She did not desire him, and he had taken no time to ensure even a weak facsimile of desire, and so she winced as he moved inside her, wishing she could be somewhere else, inhabit some other memory, while Mordred had his way with an empty shell of a body. But when she tried to retreat into her mind, she was back in the tower with Lancelot, and she could not bear it, she could not suffer that memory as it was being reenacted...

Something in his voice seemed desperate with something other than lust. Did he _want_ her to pretend? Would it heighten his pleasure, if she were to touch his face and call him Arthur? Lancelot had wanted to set Arthur inside. Did Mordred want to be him? Beneath her pain, beneath her nauseating hatred, she felt the old pity stir, and she bit it back with her screams. 

“You held me,” she reminded him, as the tears began to fall anyway. “When Lancelot…. You saw what it did to me. Now you would do the same?”

It was unfair that she should pity him and be unable to stir the same feeling in his own breast. 

“Answer me, you -!” 

Mordred clapped his hand again over her mouth, his elbow braced on her shoulder. He leaned on her for leverage as he thrust himself inside her, and if she quivered with pain, he only shuddered in pleasure.

“Do you think I wanted it like this?” he rasped, his breathing betraying him. “I did want to be… Sweet. Sweet Guinevere, lovely Guinevere…. I wanted to be what you deserve…”

She let out a sob against his palm, and he smothered it so tightly she struggled to breathe, thrashing beneath him unheeded as she tried to turn her head away. When he released her to caress her body through her ruined dress, she gasped for air.

With a dim sense of horror she realized he mistook that for bliss. He buried his face in her hair and clutched her to his hips, and she stared at the ceiling and shivered with revulsion as he cried out her name and went still.

When he tried to kiss her she bit him savagely, and letting out a scream of pain he forced her again to the floor and struck her so hard she fell back. This time it was almost a pleasure to be struck, because the sharpness of that pain was a distraction from her soreness everywhere else. It was almost a balm to her shame.

Her own glimpse of her body made her want to tear her flesh with her nails. She was bare nearly to the waist in both directions, lying in a crater of opened skirts, she could already see a mark on one of her exposed breasts that would become a bruise. _What you deserve_ , she thought as wild, miserable laughter came to her lips. She had prayed to God, she had been true to Arthur, she had been as good and as kind as she had known how to be. Mordred had not given her what she deserved. He was not an agent of fate, and certainly not of God; simply a base traitor who had ruined his father’s wife because he could not stand to look into a mirror and know his own face.

Guinevere covered her womanhood compulsively with her skirts and clenched her knees to her chest, baring her teeth at him and rocking in place without realizing she did so.

Although it hurt to speak of him, she could not help one attempt to injure Mordred. “Even Lancelot treated me better,” she taunted him. She had a mad momentary desire to anger him so much he would hurt her again - possibly even kill her, and free her from the prison of her fallible mortal body.

Mordred gave her a nearly childish look of contempt as he redressed himself.

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “But our marriage won’t always be like this, Guinevere. You’ll see the man I am, perhaps even the man I can only be with you... and you’ll come to love him.”

He reached for her again and she beat his hand away before she realized he had meant to help her to her feet. As if she weren’t on this floor because he had pushed her there in the first place. 

She knew then he believed every thing he said. Voice trembling, she retorted incredulously, “A marriage built on rape and betrayal? I’ll hate you more tomorrow than I do today, every _single_ day, until God liberates me from you.”

“Oh, Guinevere,” said Mordred, with a sad and horribly bright smile on his face. He squatted before her and took her hand sharply by the wrist when she struck out at him again. “Soon you’ll come to know what I know. Love and hatred, as you lie in bed at night and contemplate the object of your passion… They’re one and the same thing.”

He seized her roughly by the hair and dipped her backward for another bruising kiss, and then he left her on the floor, weeping.


End file.
